ENGL 4313/5583: Shakespeare: Tragedies

John M. Mercer, Professor of English

Northeastern State University, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

Study Guide 5: Othello

Revised 10-6-10

 

Background

Othello is chronologically

  • the first of Shakespeare’s Jacobean tragedies, written during the reign of King James I (1603-25).  (In Latin, the word for James is “Jacobus.”)
  • the second, after Hamlet, of Shakespeare’s “four great tragedies.”

 

  1. In the Renaissance, a novella (an Italian word that literally means “a little new thing”) was a short prose tale.  In literature today, however, what is a novella? 
  2. Who wrote the Italian novella that was Shakespeare’s main source for Othello? 
  3. When did Shakespeare write Othello?
  4. What is the full title of this play?  In what sense does the title contain an oxymoron or contradiction in terms?
  5. In Early Modern English, the word “Moor” could refer to either a black African or an Arab from Northern Africa.  Which kind of Moor do the lines of the play suggest? 
  6. Prior knowledge or extra-credit research:  What is Verdi’s Otello, and what is its relationship to Shakespeare’s Othello?

 

Setting: Time and Place

  1. What city provides the setting of act 1?  What island provides the setting of acts 2-5?  How do these settings sharply contrast with each other? 
  2. This play is said to use “double time” in that some events would appear to take much longer to occur than the three days that supposedly elapse from the beginning to the end of the play.  What inconsistencies arise concerning the amount of time required for each of the following events?  What passages suggest these inconsistencies?
    1. Time for Iago repeatedly to ask Emilia to steal Desdemona’s handkerchief
    2. Time for Desdemona to have had many sexual encounters with Cassio
    3. Time for Cassio to have stayed away from Bianca for a week 

 

Dramatic Intensity and Dramatic Irony

In the theatre, this play is believed to have greater dramatic intensity or emotional effect on the audience than do most of Shakespeare’s other tragedies.  According to theatre lore, audience members have been known to stand up and shout at Othello, “She didn’t do it!”   Part of the reason for the play’s effect is that it focuses on the breakdown of a single marriage rather than the collapse of an entire society.

  1. In what sense does the tragic outcome of each of the previous tragedies we have studied affect society as a whole more than Othello does?
  2. The play constantly uses dramatic irony.  What creates most of the dramatic irony?  How does the dramatic irony contribute to the play’s dramatic intensity?    

 

Relationship between Othello and Desdemona

  1. How are Othello and Desdemona different in each of the following ways?
    1. Race
    2. Place of origin
    3. Upbringing (the kind of life each apprently had while growing up)
    4. Age
    5. Temperament
  2. As the plot of the play unfolds, how do these differences work against their relationship?
  3. According to Othello’s and Desdemona’s explanations (both in 1.3), what is the basis of their attraction and relationship?  Is this a sound basis for a relationship?  Why or why not?
  4. In an interesting transference, Othello identifies Desdemona with his career.
    1. Where in the play does he call her his “warrior”? 
    2. In the so-called second temptation scene, when Othello believes that Desdemona has been unfaithful to him, what does he say that shows he associates her with his career (3.3.347-57)?
  5. What characters and situations in the play reflect social prejudice against interracial marriage?  What shows that Othello has internalized this prejudice? How does Othello and Desdemona’s relationship suffer as a result of this prejudice?  
  6. What position, if any, does the play as a whole take on the issue of interracial marriage?

 

The Character of Iago

  1. Iago is one of Shakespeare’s best-known, most skillful, and most vicious villains.  What other villains have we studied in this course?  How do they compare with Iago?
  2. In act 1, scene 1, what racist slurs do Iago and Roderigo use to refer to Othello?  What racist comments about Othello does Iago make elsewhere in the play?
  3. Over the course of the play, in his conversations with Roderigo and in his soliloquies, Iago identifies several different reasons for his villainy against Othello (and to a lesser extent, against Desdemona and Cassio).  What specific lines reveal each of the following motivations?
    1. Othello has chosen Cassio rather than Iago to be his lieutenant.
    2. Othello may have slept with Iago’s wife, Emilia.
    3. Cassio may have slept with Iago’s wife, Emilia.
    4. Iago lusts for Desdemona.
    5. Iago hates the “daily beauty” in Cassio’s life because it makes him look bad.
  4. How convincing do you find each of the above motivations?
  5. What other possible motivations, either stated or unstated in the play, can you identify for Iago’s villainy?
  6. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the first great literary critics of Shakespeare’s plays, describes the speeches in which Iago identifies his motivations as “the motive-hunting of motiveless malignity.”  What does this mean?  Do you agree or disagree? 

The great 20th-century Shakespearean critic Helen Gardner warns that one misses the point to be overly concerned about a character’s motivations in drama.  The script, she says, never explains  the complete motivation for action because, both in drama and in life, it is impossible to fully know others’ motivations.  Human behavior, Gardner says, is a mystery that constantly surprises us.   

 

  1. In some ways Iago is like a Vice character from medieval morality plays because he does not have a guilty conscience but delights in evil for its own sake.  Often the audience laughs at the wit and humor of a Vice character.  
    1. What villain previously studied in this class has also been compared to a Vice character?
    2. In what particular instances does Iago seem proud of his evil schemes?
    3. In what instances does he or could he elicit laughter from the audience?
  2. Iago has also been classified as a Satan figure (like Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost and Claggart in Melville’s Billy Budd) because his villainy seems to be directed against others in whom he sees good. 
    1. In what sense are the victims of Iago’s villainy—Othello, Desmonda, and Cassio—basically good characters?  What passages in the play suggest that Iago recognizes and resents the good he sees in his victims?
    2. When Othello recognizes the truth about Iago, how does he compare Iago to the devil (5.2.286-87)?
    3. Do you find any other support for the idea that Iago is a Satan figure?
  3. J. I. M. Stewart’s psychoanalytical criticism in Character and Motive in Shakespeare asserts that Iago’s actions can be understood as the result of homosexual desires of which he is not consciously aware.
    1. What would suggest that Iago may be jealous of Othello’s relationship with Cassio?
    2. How could Iago’s belief that his wife Emilia may have slept with Othello be a projection of his own desires?
    3. How could Iago’s story about having slept with Cassio (3.3.413-26) be a projection of Iago’s own homosexuality?
  4. A. C. Bradley in his monumental Shakespearean Tragedy (published in 1904) suggests that Iago’s process in planning his villainy, revealed in his early soliloquies, is similar to the process of a playwright in writing a play.
    1. What evidence is there that Iago, like a playwright, begins with only a vague mental image of what he wants to occur?
    2. What evidence is there that Iago, like a playwright, manipulates characters into fulfilling his desires by using each of the following techniques?

                                                              i.      Leading others to make surmises

                                                            ii.      Not completely stating his own thoughts

                                                          iii.      Repeating suggestive images

  1. Othello and Iago can be seen as representing two inseparable elements of human nature.
    1. What evidence suggests that Othello represents the good, emotional, romantic aspirations for which humans strive?
    2. What evidence suggests that Iago represents the evil, rational (in the sense of using reasoning), cynical tendency to destroy our own aspirations from within?   

 

Iago’s Temptation of Othello

Within act 3, scene 3, two separate “temptation scenes” can be identified:

  • First temptation scene: 3.3.35-257
  • Second temptation scene: 3.3.333-480
  1. In these temptation scenes (and elsewhere in the play, if applicable), where and how does Iago skillfully use each of the following techniques to trick Othello into believing that Desdemona has been unfaithful to him?
    1. Playing on Othello’s own subconscious fears about his marriage to Desdemona
    2. Using the power of suggestion to drop hints of suspicion rather than openly stating his lies
    3. Holding back and pretending he doesn’t want to say what he thinks
    4. Repeating suggestive images that torment Othello’s mind
    5. Relying on his reputation for honesty but telling outright lies
    6. Using reverse psychology by telling Othello not to be jealous
    7. Winning Othello’s confidence in his superior knowledge and experience (3.3.201-04)
  2. What other techniques does Iago use to deceive Othello?
  3. What lines of Iago and Othello show that Othello has been so greatly influenced by Iago that he mimics Iago’s language?   
  4. In these temptation scenes (and elsewhere in the play, if applicable), where and how does Othello reveal each of the following aspects of his background, character, and experience that make him especially vulnerable to Iago’s trickery?
    1. Othello has no experience with women and domestic life.
    2. Othello has good first instincts (as shown by his choosing Cassio over Iago as his lieutenant and his initially not believing Desdemona could be unfaithful) but can’t stand to remain in uncertainty for any length of time.
    3. Othello is insecure about being so different from Desdemona.
    4. Othello attaches great importance to the handkerchief given him by his mother.
  5. What other aspects of Othello’s background and experience make him particularly vulnerable to Iago’s deceptions?

 

The Character of Othello

  1. Othello’s last speech (5.2.338-56) is very important to the interpretation of Othello’s character. 
    1. Do you agree with Othello’s assertion that he loved Desdemona “too well”?
    2. Do you agree with Othello’s assertion that he is not usually jealous?  Earlier in the play, what does Desdemona tell Emilia about Othello’s jealousy?
    3. What situation previously occurred when Othello was in Aleppo?  How does this situation relate to what Othello is doing now?
  2. Based on their interpretations of this last speech and of the play as a whole, literary critics today tend to see Othello in one of the following two ways.  Which of these two interpretations do you think the play better supports?  Why?
    1. He is a noble tragic hero whose best traits work against him.  (A. C. Bradley represents this view.)
    2. He is a gullible fool who lacks self-knowledge.  (F. R. Leavis says this.)
  3. Editors David Bevington and David Scott Kastan note that actors playing Othello over the centuries have tended to excel at portraying one, but rarely both, of the following sides of Othello’s character.  Which scenes particularly require Othello to express each of the following emotions?
    1. “towering violent jealousy”  and “fierce . .. rage”  
    2. “grandeur and presence” and “poignant . . . grief”

 

Othello as an Aristotelian Tragedy

Support your answers to each of the following questions with explanations and evidence from the play.

 

Character of the tragic hero

  1. Is Othello noble in birth and social status?
  2. Is Othello noble in character?
  3. Does Othello have a hamartia or imperfection that causes his fall from happiness to misery?
    1. Does Othello make any mistakes or errors in judgment that cause his fall?
    2. Does Othello commit a criminal act that causes his fall?
    3. Does Othello have a moral weakness that causes his fall?
    4. Does Othello possess any otherwise good character traits that work against him, causing his fall?
  4. Does Othello suffer more than he deserves?

 

Plot of the tragedy

  1. Does the plot of Othello observe the unity of action found in classical tragedy?  That is, does the play have one and only one plot? 
  2. Does Othello have a subplot that could be deleted without harming the main plot?  If so, what is the subplot?
  3. Are the events of the plot linked in a believable chain of cause and effect?  Support your answer.
  4. Is there a moment in the plot when the tragic hero experiences a final reversal?  When?
  5. Is there a moment in the plot when the tragic hero experiences recognition?  When?
  6. Does the end of the play reveal a scene of suffering?  What does it include?

 

Effect of tragedy on the audience

  1. Does the audience feel the emotion of pity for the tragic hero?
  2. Do the audience members feel the emotion of fear for themselves?
  3. Does the end of the play give the audience reason to feel uplifted rather than depressed?

 

Famous Lines

Find each of the following famous lines in the play; identify the speaker, listener, and situation; and explain what the passage means.

  1. “[Y]ou . . . will not serve God, if the devil bid you.”
  2. “Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation!  I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.”
  3. “Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, / Is the immediate jewel of their souls” (and following lines)
  4. “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! / It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on.”
  5. “Willow, willow, willow”
  6. “Then must you speak / Of one that lov’d not wisely but too well.”